Crazy Alphabet

Submitter: Here is a seriously politically incorrect ABC book! The story builds so each phrase is repeated as you add the next letter. So, you would be saying “H is for the hand that held the gun……” over and over and over…… Yes, found this in our public library collection today. It has been withdrawn before some angry mother reads it!

Holly: In certain communities – and it sounds like Submitter knows his/her community well – this would not be welcome in a children’s collection. I doubt we’d have a problem in my library, to be honest. This is a good example of really needing to know your community, though!

Whats wrong with you people? Thisone is super weird and fun! Remember the old cartoons, e.g. Looney Toons or so… Much more violent than this book… I just ordered my copy on ebay – thanks for pointing it out.

“G is for Gun… To scare the elephant… That sat on the dog”… What a story!

Sigh. It’s a pop-gun. See the cork coming out? It is no threat whatsoever but is being used to scare the elephant — a very mild scare. I do like the pictures; I guess that’s a matter of taste. I would’ve liked them as a child. I would put this in my elementary school library.

I wouldn’t like to see this book in the hands of my kids either, but doesn’t weeding books on the grounds of perceived political incorrectness violate our code of ethics? Just to quote the IFLA Code of Ethics, under no. 5: “Librarians and other information workers distinguish between their personal convictions and professional duties. They do not advance private interests or personal beliefs at the expense of neutrality.” What do you think?

You see? Stuff like THIS is why so much of America’s rural heartland–the places where schools shut down on the first day of deer hunting season because half the male teachers, some of the female teachers, and even many of the students take to the woods instead of the classrooms, and where people own guns because the response time of sheriffs or animal control may be measured with a calendar instead of a clock–have so much trouble taking education professionals and liberal-arts majors seriously! This is the same “political correctness” malarkey that gets kids suspended or expelled for chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun, or pointing a finger and going “pow, pow!”

I’m not an NRA member, and I don’t even own a gun myself. The rest of the book may fail on other lack of merits for all we know, but if the inclusion of a pop gun is the only reason to condemn this book, then I’m going to fall back on the much-abused cliché, “This is why America is circling the drain!”

Yes, I admit it. I did watch a lot of violent classic cartoons when I was a kid. My brother and I used to watch the old Pink Panther cartoons on TV every day, and if you thought the Looney Tunes had plenty of unrealistic gun violence… my brother started complaining what was the point of the characters shooting each other since they never died, anyway. But I live in a country where guns are not as big of a deal as they are in certain other countries that shall remain nameless.